Thanking Seon Elder Mun for Sending Rice and Cotton謝文禪老惠米與綿
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 10 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
When my house was at its height,
we steamed fragrant jade-white rice till the steamer was pressed down.
Sated, I would not set a spoon to it,
much less eat grain that was barely hulled.
Snow-white silk floss from the land of Shu (蜀)
I reckoned ten catties of it hardly a handful.
I used it without holding it precious,
and let it blow away for nothing like willow down.
Because of this I am now in want,
with not a single bushel stored in the house.
My greedy mouth is always drooling,
and I stroke in vain a belly that rumbles like thunder.
The ninth-month frosty sky is high,
and in one night's wind the trees are stripped.
My single quilt is colder than iron,
and my body shrinks like a frozen turtle.
Of a sudden I received a sealed letter,
which gave me the very thing my heart had wished for.
At dusk I lit a fire in the cold hearth,
and blue smoke rose at last in the house.
Spreading it inside my thin clothes,
I am as warm as if I bore the winter sun on my back.
Moved by a good man's heart,
my tears run on like the eyes of the mermaid (鮫人).